The Living Key
by ruth7019
Summary: Harry speaks with Dumbledore's portrait and finds a bit of closure. (Word of warning: If you haven't read "What's Owed" you might not like or understand this.)


**A/N:** If you've read "What's Owed", please see this short piece as a sort of prequel to the sequel that I'm working on. Or, just see it as a scene that I couldn't fit into the original story or the sequel. Either way, I'll provide the same caveat as I provided in the other drabbles I wrote: If you haven't read "What's Owed" you might not like or understand this. Thank you. Please, read on. ~Ruth7019

Disclaimer: JK Rowling's characters.

 **Minerva McGonagall's Office, Hogwarts, July 1997 (20)**

"Professor?"

"Harry! Do come in."

Before opening the door, Harry had heard voices. McGonagall hadn't mentioned that someone else might be using her office when she granted him access to the spiral stairwell, so Harry reckoned it was the heads chatting with one another. As he entered the room, he saw Dexter Fortescue and Dumbledore looking at him from the recently deceased headmaster's portrait. Just as he had thought, many of the heads were engaged in conversations in other portraits, as well. When they saw Harry, many stopped and smiled and began applauding. Harry ducked his head, horrified.

"How lovely to see you, Harry," Dumbledore said, cutting through the clapping and shouts of, "There he is!" and "Our Harry Potter!" Once the applause faded and Fortescue had excused himself to go back to his own portrait, Dumbledore said, "Please, sit!"

Harry shook his head. "It's kind of a nuisance to get up once I'm down. I'll stand, if you don't mind."

"Not at all, dear boy. Come closer."

Although he was exhausted and achy after the walk from the lake, Harry slowly hobbled over to the desk, then around it to stand before the enormous gilded frame prominently perched on the wall behind the headmistress's chair. When the need arose, McGonagall had only to shift back a bit and spin to look directly at Dumbledore.

The headmaster was clad in silver and bronze-colored robes. To Harry, they looked like they'd been made for formal occasions. They were beautifully embroidered with silver threading weaved throughout the bronze material creating a variety of raised patterns, one that Harry recognized as Fawkes. The bell of the sleeves had a combination of bronze and silver fringe hanging from them, covering Dumbledore's hands. His casket had been closed at the funeral, so Harry wondered if these were the robes in which Dumbledore had been buried. Regardless, the old wizard looked happy, which made Harry happy.

"You..." Harry began. "I'm sorry I didn't come to see you earlier."

Dumbledore gave a dismissive snort. "To be sure, I have suffered horrifyingly spectacular moments of vanity, never minding the ego stroking that came with them, but I do realize that you have had rather a bit to be going on with. Minerva and my brother kept me abreast of your condition and your astonishing recovery. They also spoke of Severus, and… Well, Severus loves you desperately."

Harry flushed and looked down at the floor.

"Oh, my boy, I did not mean to upset you."

"I'm fine. We're off to Cornwall on Sunday."

"Yes. Severus said as much." Dumbledore clasped his hands over his stomach and smiled. "He is looking well and content. It quite suits him."

"Yes, it does," said Dilys Derwent, her lace-hooded head bobbing up and down in agreement.

"I… May I ask you something, sir?"

"Anything, Harry."

"It's sort of personal. It's about you, a-and your family. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"There are few, if any, secrets in death."

When Harry spoke, he did so slowly, as if afraid of offending his headmaster. "The night of the battle, Voldemort, he…he said some things, about you."

"Go on."

"I know he was just trying to, you know, kill my faith in you by saying what he said. He said… He, er –"

Dumbledore smiled softly. "I have an idea of what you are trying so wonderfully _not_ to say, Harry."

Harry leaned forward on his walking-stick. "He said you thought wizards should rule Muggles. He mentioned Azkaban, and your – your sister, he –"

"He was telling the truth."

"Oh," said Harry, surprised at how easily Dumbledore admitted it.

Harry hadn't wanted to believe Voldemort, but he hadn't thought the man was lying either. The dark wizard had taken a sick pleasure in taunting Harry, in hurting him, and in Harry's experience, nothing hurt more than the truth. While Voldemort's words had stung, Harry had learned that the truth, no matter how hurtful, was better than living with a lie.

"Does this knowledge shock you?"

Harry shrugged and shook his head. "I know you're not, er, weren't perfect."

Dumbledore chuckled. "Far from it."

"Yeah, but you were nothing like him, like Voldemort."

"I did not kill for the sake of keeping wizarding bloodlines pure, but I did, for a time, view Muggles as ignorant and violent and in need of being ruled by their betters, a rather harsh and unfavorable perception to be sure."

"What changed your mind?"

"Gellert Grindelwald. The very spark to fire my disdain, also snuffed it out, as _he_ was all too happy to kill for the sake of keeping wizarding bloodlines pure. I never saw the point for such an extreme reaction. I believed our goals could be achieved without such measures."

"What did you want to achieve?"

Dumbledore snorted softly. "The Greater Good."

"What does that mean?"

Dumbledore sighed. "The goal was to feel powerful, Harry. That motto, well, I later saw it for the clever, disingenuous euphemism I think it was meant to be. It was simply an excuse to use magic to make others feel helpless and fearful."

"How is that different from what Voldemort wanted?"

"I suppose it is not, but it was all in the execution. Or so I thought at the time."

"But no matter how you package it, oppression is still oppression, prejudice is still prejudice, right?"

"Yes," Dumbledore said quietly. "But you are not here to judge me for my past. It troubles you."

"What?" Harry said, his brow furrowed, although he had an idea of what Dumbledore meant.

"That history between us, between Tom and me, between him and Severus."

Harry shrugged, irritated by the truth of that. "I just hated that he threw things like that in my face, things I didn't know. Didn't want to know." Harry mumbled that last bit.

"But now you do. Does it change anything? Your feelings for me, for Severus?"

Harry's eyes connected with Dumbledore's. "You gave your life for us, and Dad… Voldemort could _never_ make me feel any differently about him."

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled as he asked, "So, did I answer your questions to your satisfaction?"

Harry blushed. "I just… I just wanted to hear it from you, not him. He was just so…" Harry let out an explosive sigh. "I figured he was telling the truth, but he liked it, liked hurting me. I just wanted to hear it from you without his… tone, or whatever."

"I see."

The two wizards sat in silence for a moment, until Harry said, "Do you remember that night, the last time I saw you?"

"Yes, of course, Harry."

"I felt like a little kid, watching you. I think I thought, or hoped, in that moment, that you'd be the one to defeat him. You were so powerful."

"But you did it, Harry. You defeated him."

Harry shook his head. "I just wish I'd said something more to you, talked you out of staying, like Dad wanted. Maybe you'd still be here." Harry's eyes filled with tears.

"Oh, Harry. I would do the same thing again."

"I know," Harry said, brushing the tears away with the heel of his palm.

Phineas Nigellus Black sighed loudly. "I daresay the atmosphere in here is veering toward the maudlin. Could we change the subject?"

"I don't recall you being a part of the conversation, Phin," said Everard Currant.

"Why don't you piss –"

"Well," said Dumbledore, interrupting the row that was brewing, "now that I am dead a number of scintillating books are sure to be written. I understand Rita Skeeter is to be first out of the gate, releasing a lengthy, sordid tome titled _The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore_."

Harry scowled. "She wouldn't dare!"

Dumbledore chuckled. "Indeed she would."

"Fie!" hissed Dilys Derwent.

Harry frowned. "There must be some way to stop her."

"If that it mattered."

"'Course it matters! She could write up any old rot!"

"To be sure, but she shall certainly top it off with bits of truth so that it is not a complete fable."

"Lie, you mean."

Dumbledore shrugged.

"Why doesn't she write about Voldemort? He was the villain."

"Everyone knows that already," said Phineas Nigellus Black.

"'S ridiculous," Harry muttered.

Someone needed to write something about the dark wizard, establish an account of his evil exploits so that they wouldn't be forgotten or whitewashed, especially as _The Daily Prophet_ ignored them in favor of portraying his followers as victims. Snape had asked Harry to stop reading the paper because it did nothing but infuriate him, but Harry wanted to know which Death Eaters were being captured and which ones continued to evade Aurors. He held out hope to see Lucius's name among those that had been caught. Now, though, after listening to Dumbledore, he dearly hoped Skeeter wasn't planning to pen a novel about him. She'd be in for a nasty fight if she tried.

A moment later he said to Dumbledore, "Will you tell me about him?"

"Tom?"

"Voldemort."

"One and the same, I suppose."

"Are they?"

"What are you asking, Harry?"

"Do you think he was born evil?"

"Is that what you believe?"

Harry frowned and shook his head. "Dunno. Don't even know why I want to understand him. I just do. He did so much... I want to hate him, but I can't because… I don't know."

"Hatred is a powerful emotion, Harry, one that requires much energy to maintain, physically and mentally."

"I guess."

"Which tells me you have never truly felt it."

"I felt it through Voldemort," Harry said, then quietly added: "I felt it when Dad told me the truth about my parents."

"You were hurt, quite understandably, by Severus's disclosure. However, as much as you may think that what you felt was hate, I believe it was simply hurt."

"That was the worst," Harry said. "I thought losing Sirius was the worst I could ever feel…"

"Yes, and look at how far you have come, you and Severus. You have forgiven him and moved on. That is something Tom could never have done, for any circumstance."

"He hurt Dad when Dad was a Death Eater."

"Yes."

"Do you know…"

Dumbledore held up a hand. "That is something best discussed with Severus."

Harry nodded, then said, as if just remembering, "Voldemort also said something weird, something about 'our Muggle forebears', but he was a pure-blood."

"No, he was not."

"What?"

"His mother, Merope Gaunt, was a witch; his father, Tom Riddle Sr., was a Muggle."

"Oh."

"Merope lived with her brother Morfin, and her father Marvolo. As the last of Salazar Slytherin's descendants, their family had been among the pure-blood elite, but by the 1940s, they lived in a shack at the foot of the hill near the Riddle house. Tom Riddle Sr. was handsome, young, rich. Merope fell in love with him. It is a rather sad tale."

"She was a most unfortunate looking creature." Phineas Nigellus Black interjected.

"To gain his attentions, she dosed Tom with a love potion," said Dumbledore. "Once she became pregnant, she stopped dosing him, thinking the knowledge that he was about to become a father would endear her to him, but the opposite happened. Marvolo disowned her, forced her out of their home. She gave birth to Tom Jr. in a Muggle orphanage and died soon after. Tom remained at the orphanage until I went to collect him so that he could attend Hogwarts."

"Wow." Harry breathed. "I – Wow. But how come no one else knew he was a Half-blood?"

"Some did."

"Why did they follow him, then? Knowing that, why _would_ they follow him?"

"He appealed to their vanity. It did not matter that he was not what he claimed. He masterfully validated their ideal of themselves, let them gorge on a diet of their superiority while obscuring the truth of his ancestry."

Harry sighed. "I s'pose it doesn't matter why. He was what he was, right?"

"He made his choice, yes."

"Do you think he could have been different, not so…angry? Or was he destined to be the way he was?"

"Destiny, Harry?" Dumbledore smiled.

Harry snuffled softly. "I know. Dad would go round the bend if he heard that."

Dumbledore laughed.

"But he's the perfect example, isn't he? Of being different than what your childhood sets up for you?"

"You both are, Harry."

"But he didn't have everyone thinking of him as the Savior of the Wizarding World. People despised him and he made something of himself anyway."

"That he did."

"Pretty amazing." Harry grinned.

Dumbledore chuckled. "He certainly is."

A knock at the door startled both wizards.

"Harry?" Snape said, poking his head inside.

"I'm here."

"Severus! My boy!"

"Albus," Snape said, coming to stand next to Harry. "You've been up here nearly an hour."

"Really?" Harry glanced down at his watch.

"Time does fly in the midst of such excellent company," Dumbledore said.

"Your excellent company just walked to the lake and back, against my wishes."

Harry growled, annoyed. "Dad, I'm fine."

"Ah, nevertheless, you should go rest," said Dumbledore.

"I wanted to see you."

"And it has been lovely, but you are certainly exhausted."

"Come," Snape said, placing his hand on Harry's neck.

"Goodnight, Headmaster," Harry said to Dumbledore, choosing not to argue with Snape. He knew he wouldn't win.

"Goodnight, dear boy. Severus."

"Goodnight, sir."

It took Harry a moment to get started. Standing in one spot for so long had stiffened his body. When Snape reached to help him, Harry jerked away. "I can do it."

"Oh, he's a brave, but stubborn one, isn't he?" Dilys Derwent tutted.

"You've no idea," Snape muttered as he stepped out of Harry's way so that the boy could maneuver around McGonagall's desk unimpeded.

Harry frowned and stared at his left leg until it finally did what it was told. The instant it moved, he huffed out a relieved breath; Snape breathed out, too. Once they reached the door, Dumbledore said, "Take care of him, dear boy."

"I will," Snape and Harry answered at the same time, making Dumbledore laugh.

*WO


End file.
